a
totally inexperienced uncle, enter into satisfactory relations with a
young person encumbered with the stately cognomen of Pauline? She was
sure to be haughty and unapproachable. No wonder that she puckered up
her face in hostile protest as often as he offered her a perfunctory
salutation. He was becoming fairly afraid of the little month-old
personage, when one day, he hit upon the reassuring device of turning
Pauline, with all its conservative dignity, into Polly. If the testimony
of a gentleman and an officer was to be relied upon, their good
understanding dated from that hour. For Uncle Dan was willing to take
his oath that the very day on which the two soft, ingratiating syllables
fell upon the small pink ear, the small pink face relaxed into an
expression of kindly tolerance, blossoming out a few days later into
that ecstatic first smile which had sealed his subjugation.

Uncle Dan was perhaps not thinking of this circumstance, as he glanced
to-day at the serenely blissful young face beside him, a face which had
never in all these years begrudged him a smile. Yet such reminiscences
were not wholly foreign to his thoughts, and they doubtless lent their
own agreeable though unrecognised flavour to his meditations, as he
looked upon the Venetian lagoons through the eyes of his Pollys.

In the course of time two other little maids had come upon the
scene,--Susan and Isabella were their unsuggestive names. Married now,
both of them, Uncle Dan was wont to state, parenthetically; and indeed,
if the truth be known, he had always taken a parenthetical view of these
unexceptionable little nieces. But when his Polly had remained for seven
years without a rival in his affections, a fourth small damsel had
presented herself, and had been regarded by her parents as the logical
candidate for her mother's name. From that time forth the Colonel was
the happy possessor of two Pollys, and it would have been difficult to
say which had the more complete ascendency over him. Big Polly and
little Polly he called them, and before the little one was well out of
long clothes he had formed the project of showing his Pollys the world.

The death of his sister having occurred some years since, his
brother-in-law's second marriage, which took place after a due interval,
left Uncle Dan with a free hand to carry out his project. He could not
but feel indebted to Beverly for taking a step which rendered him
independent of daughterly ministrat